The
term Persian has been used in the English language for over five hundred years:
to describe both a nation with 7000 years of archaeological history, and also
the language that nation has used since the rise of the first Persian Empire,
the Achaemenids.

Unfortunately
however, the word ‘Farsi’ is increasingly and incorrectly being used to
describe the Persian language. This paper outlines the linguistic and cultural
context of Persian, as well as exploring the potential motivations of those
promoting the incorrect usage of the word ‘Farsi’.

It
explains clearly how the use of the word ‘Farsi’ instead of Persian voids
important historical and cultural associations for the Iranian nation, with its
long history of civilisation, and how it can therefore be seen as an insult to
the heritage of Iran.

LINGUISTICS

New
Persian or Persian for short is described
linguistically as an Indo-European language. It is categorised as one of the
Modern Iranian languages, along with Kurdish, Baluchi, Pashto, Ossetic and
number of other languages. It is a member of the Western Iranian branch of the
Iranian languages, which are themselves a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian (or
Indo-Aryan) family of languages. As such, Persian is distantly related to the
vast majority of European languages, including English.

Over
the past three millennia, Persian has developed through three distinct stages of
Old, Middle and New. New Persian is a successor to, and derived directly from
Middle Persian, and can be considered as having two phases: classical and
modern – although both variants are mutually intelligible[1].

The
period after the Islamic conquest is described by Iranian scholars as the ‘Two
Centuries of Silence’. There is no inscriptional or textual evidence for New
Persian and only very scanty indications for the continuing use of Middle
Persian. However scholars consider it unlikely that Iranians deserted
their mother tongue and only cultivated Arabic[2].
The lack of any literary evidence from this period will certainly have been
compounded by the destruction of Iranian libraries by the Mongols under Genghis
Khan and his successors – and there may also be other reasons unknown to us[3].

The
subsequent ‘Persian renaissance’ was marked by the advent of Classical
Persian. This emerged in Khorasan in eastern Iran[4]
and so was strongly influenced by Eastern-Iranian linguistic elements[5].
Arabic also had a major impact: with large numbers of loanwords, increasing
palatalisation and also the inclusion of some grammatical elements. A modified
version of Arabic script was adopted and some letter changes were made. For the
purposes of this paper, the most important of these was the use of /F/ for /P/.
As Arabic has no /p/ phoneme, the area of Pārs, the Iranian people who
originated there and their language came to be described by natives as ‘Fārs’
and ‘Fārsi’.

After
these linguistic changes, Persian then remained essentially unchanged until the
nineteenth century. At that time, what is now called Modern or Standard Persian
developed from the Tehrani vernacular – following the adoption of Tehran as
the capital city of Iran by the Qajars in 1787.

NOMENCLATURE

The
name Persian derives from the province of Pārs (modern Fārs) in southwestern
Iran. This was itself named after the Persian tribes of Indo-European nomads who
migrated, along with some other Iranian peoples, from territories east of the
Caspian Sea onto the Iranian plateau in the middle[6]
or later part of the second millennium BCE[7].

The
Persians settled in the mountain country rising over the northeast side of the
Persian Gulf and enclosing the high basin in the west in which Persepolis and
Shiraz are situated[8],
some time between the seventh and ninth centuries BCE[9].
The name survived as Fārs[10].
This region then became the birthplace of two Persian dynastic empires – the
Achaemenids (550-530 BCE) and the Sasanids (224-651CE) – as well as the cradle
of the Persian language.

Achaemenid
Persians called their language (Old Persian) Pārsa and the Greeks
followed this in naming it Persis. From then on, other nations have
predominantly named Persia and Persian using words based on the root Pārs-[11].

For
example, the English use of the word ‘Persian’ has a five hundred year
history[12]
and is derived from the Latin Persianus, itself drawing on the Greek Persis.
Similarly, the French word is Persane, the Germans use Persisch,
the Italians Persiano and the Russians Persiska.

As
outlined above, Persian only came to be described as ‘Fārsi’ by natives of
Iran following the P/F letter substitution associated with the Arab conquests.

SAME
LANGUAGE, DIFFERENT NAMES

Persian
is the language of at least 110 million people worldwide – sixty to seventy
million of whom are mother-tongue speakers. The most substantial populations are
in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, but there are also significant numbers in
neighbouring countries[13],[14]–
including Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Turkey and the Caucasus[15]
– and also in the Persian Gulf states[16].
In addition, since the 1979 revolution, emigration from Iran has led to the
creation of Persian-speaking diaspora communities in many countries worldwide,
especially in the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and Israel. The
largest urban community of Iranians outside Iran is now in the Los Angeles area[17].

All
these populations use regional versions of Persian with different proportions of
non-Persian loanwords[18] and slightly different pronunciations[19]
compared to the Persian spoken in Iran[20].
Some of the alternatives have
different local names: Tajiks call their Persian Tojiki, while Afghans often use
the word Dari[21].

However,
unlike Arabic, all the alternatives are mutually comprehensible. Contrary to the
views of some academics and institutions, they are the same language.

The
Cultural Heritage News Agency of Iran explains why the versions of Persian have
at least a strong a claim as those of Arabic to be considered as one language[22]:

“Some
mistakenly believe that, in English, the official language of Iran should be
called Farsi, while the language spoken in Tajikistan and Afghanistan should be
called Dari, and Persian should be utilised to refer to all of them. However,
the difference between the Persian spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, or Tajikistan is
not significant or substantial enough to warrant such a distinction and
classification. Consider the following case: an Egyptian and a Qatari engage in
conversation in Arabic. They will encounter a great deal of difficulty in
comprehending each other. Despite this fact, the language used in their
conversation is referred to as Arabic . . On the other hand, Iranians, Tajiks
and Afghans can converse in Persian and easily understand each other. Why, then,
should their dialects be classified separately and referred to by different
names?”

Despite
this, however, some academics and academic institutions are treating the Persian
spoken in Iran and elsewhere as separate entities.

Professor
Michael Hillman from the University of Texas, for example, whilst lecturing at
the ‘Fifth Biennial Conference on Iranian Studies’, assumed that ‘Farsi’
and Tajiki are dialects of Persian[23],[24];
while undergraduates at Emory
College in US are taught ‘Farsi’ as one variety of Persian[25].
Even the Faculty of Oriental
Studies at Oxford University, who have been teaching Persian since the
seventeenth century – and who therefore really should know better, now
describe Tajik as one of the ‘branches’ of Persian[26].

THE
PERSIAN LANGUAGE AND IRANIAN IDENTITY

The
rich legacy of the Iranian nation – that is, Iranian identity at its most
fundamental – is defined by, and intertwined with, the Persian language.

“Persia
has cherished and preserved against all odds . . the shared experience of a rich
and rewarding past. It finds expression primarily through the Persian language,
not simply as a medium of comprehension but also as the chief carrier of the
Persian world view and Persian culture. The Persian language . . is a reservoir
of Iranian thought, sentiment and values, and a repository of its literary arts.
It is only by loving, learning, teaching and above all enriching the language
that the Persian identity may continue to survive”.

A
key element in the history of Persian language and culture, within the discourse
of Iranian history, is the struggle between Arab-Islamic and Iranian-nativist
identities[28].
This is not to say that Persian has
not contributed to Islam: on the contrary, Persian played a major role in the
propagation and spread of the religion in the Indian Sub-Continent, Central Asia
and even as far as China and the Far East[29].

Regional
and European perspectives on Persian

The
above concentrates on Iranian and Middle Eastern perceptions of Persian. Looking
further afield, there is a long tradition of valuing Persian language and
Iranian culture: “At its height, [the Persian language] stretched from the Aegean in
the West to Sinkiang and the Bay of Bengal in the East and from the Russian
steppes in the North to the Indian Ocean in the South”[30].

Persian,
in what
Arnold Toynbee has called the ‘Iranic Society’[31],
was the administrative and
literary language of the Ottomans and of Mughal India[32],[33].
All medieval histories of India are written in Persian[34]
and under
British rule, for the English who aspired “to
high office in India, knowledge of Persian was desirable”[35].
Indeed, until 1834,
it was the medium of all official correspondence in India[36].

Taking
a more purely European view, the Persian epic stories were first brought back to
France by the Crusaders[37].
Wolfram von Eschenbach then translated versions into German by around 1180[38].
Presenting what became known as the Parsifal Legend, Eschenbach “utilized
several Persian legends dating from about 600. By transmuting the sacred
personages of the original legends into romantic knights, he modernized the
tales for his own time. For this modernization he took as model a grand epic
from the end of the eleventh century, the Barzu-Nama, the story of a
knight named Barzu”[39].

However,
it was not until the reign of the Safavid dynasty (1507-1702) with their increasingly international commercial and
political links, that any Europeans began to learn about Persian literature
in any depth[40].
The earliest extant reference to Persian literature in English seems to
be from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. In The Arte of English Poesie
(1589), George Puttenham gives four Persian poems in translation[41].

The
17th century German Orientalist Adam Olearius then played a
significant role in popularising knowledge about Iran, following his visit there
in 1633 as secretary to the ambassador of Frederick III of Schleswig-Holstein[42].

PERSIAN
NOT FARSI

As
well as being a linguistic nonsense, it has culturally undermining effects to
use the word ‘Farsi’ rather than ‘Persian’.

Linguistically,
it is widely accepted that native speakers and foreigners use different words to
describe the same language. Alex Bellem from the School of Oriental and African
Studies (SOAS), University of London, observes[43]:

“If
we insist on 'Farsi' then shouldn't we insist also on ‘Türkče’ or ‘Español’
or ‘Elinici’,, and so on? Since it is accepted in linguistics as natural
that non-native words are adapted to conform to the phonology of the borrowing
language (perhaps via an intermediate 'conveyor' language), can we object to
'Persian' on linguistic grounds?”

Joseph
Bell, Professor of Arabic and Middle-Eastern Languages and Cultures at the
University of Bergen in Norway is stronger in his condemnation[44]:

“No
one would seriously consider substituting Deutschland for Germany, or Deutsch/Deutscher
for German in English. ‘Deutschland’ exists, of course, in English, but with
connotations for which a high price was paid . . But to use the word [Farsi] as
the normal term for the national language of Iran has to be classified as one of
the greatest affronts to great cultures in our time.”

He
goes on to examine the negative cultural implications of the usage of this term[45]:

“Saying
Farsi instead of Persian robs the language and the culture of all the sense of
splendor the name Persian has taken on in western languages through two and a
half millennia of war, trade, religious and cultural influence, and other forms
of confrontation or subtle interaction”.

This
is underlined by the Academy of Persian Language and Literature (Farhangestān-e
Zabān va Adab-e Fārsī) in Iran which clearly advocates the use of the word
‘Persian’ not ‘Farsi’[46]:

“Persian
has been used in a variety of publications including cultural, scientific and
diplomatic documents for centuries and therefore it connotes very significant
and cultural meanings. Hence changing Persian to Farsi is to negate these
important established precedents. Changing Persian to Farsi may give the
impression that it is a new language, and this may well be the intention of some
Persian users.”

“Persian,
alongside the name of a language, may be used as an adjective for the other
aspects of our history and culture. For example, we can speak about ‘Persian
Literature’, ‘Persian Gulf’, ‘Persian Carpet’, ‘Persian Food’. In
this way, ‘Persian’ may be [seen as] a common concept and function as a link
between all aspects of Iranian life, including language. ‘Farsi’ does not
have such a characteristic”.

Franklin
Lewis, Professor of Persian Language & Literature at University of Chicago,
reaffirms[48]:

“As
there is no such thing as Farsi carpets, Farsi literature, Farsi cats, Farsi
food, etc., it seems rather ridiculous to use this English neologism as a
general adjective for the language”.

Hossein
Nasr, Professor of Persian literature at George Washington University in the US,
asserts that[49]:

The
use of the word ‘Farsi’, however, dilutes this distinctive quality and
undermines Iranian culture.

Kamyar
Abdi, Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College in the US, emphasises the
importance of the Persian language and its association with Iranian national
identity and unity[50]:

“Perhaps
the most vital factor in this cultural continuity and the hallmark of Iranian
national identity is the Persian language. Having
been used in Iran at least since the time of Achaemenids in the sixth century
B.C.E., the Persian language has assumed a distinctive Iranian character and
become intertwined with Iranian national identity and unity. Not surprisingly,
in recent times the Persian language has been one of the most important contexts
in which Iranian nationalism has flourished”.

Professor
Ehsan Yarshater, the Editor of Encyclopaedia Iranica, hammers the point home[51]:

“[The
word ‘Farsi’] has no foundation in the English language and its relationship
to the identity of Iranian civilisation and culture – as reflected in phrases
such as ‘Persian literature’, ‘Persian art’ and ‘Persian poetry’ –
is not at all clear . . .As well as the linguistic points, when the word Farsi
is used in English for the Persian language, it ignores all the positive
cultural connotations of the word Persian.”

WHO
IS PROMOTING THE WORD ‘FARSI’ AND WHY?

Some
of those using the word ‘Farsi’ may be ignorant or have misunderstood. A
Wall Street Journal editor, for example, naively surmises[52]:

“Supporters
of the name Iran prefer calling the language Farsi, it seems, while the
supporters of the historical name Persia prefer Persian”.

“.
. hard though it is when dealing with the Farsi-merchants. Some of them probably
use the term because they feel uncomfortable with the seemingly fuddy-duddy
‘Persian’ and are deterred by some spark of good sense from calling the
language of Persia ‘Iranian’. For that is a family name which covers many
other languages besides Persian”.

Professor
Bell asserts that the problem is lack of knowledge and respect[54]:

“If
we know a people well enough to respect them, we will not tamper with the
corrupt forms of their names, their place names, and the names of their
languages. It is only when we do not have sufficient respect that we yield to
the urgings of the mapmakers and revert to the ‘native’ form.”

Considering
those who may have other reasons, however, there are three main groups worthy of
further discussion: those in the West; Islamic fundamentalists and pan-Arabists;
and, perhaps most worryingly of all, the Iranian diaspora.

“The
term "Farsi" began to creep into English in the 1960s, mostly as a
result of foreigners in Iran hearing it from native-speakers who, presumably,
did not know English well enough to know that the English name of their language
had always been Persian.”

“.
. [during the 1979 Revolution] a bunch of western journalists who didn't speak
the language were sent to Iran to report about the revolution. Using this exotic
word ‘Farsi’ instead of Persian might have made the impression that they
knew what they were talking about, which very often they didn't. I was just a
teenager at that time, but I still remember. In most cases they were hanging out
in the Hotel ‘Marmar’ and drinking beer, then reproducing bar gossip as
authentic reports from the heart of the revolution.”

Frances
Pritchett, Professor of Modern Indic Languages at Columbia University in the US
believes that the use of the word ‘Farsi’ was further propagated by
Urdu-speakers living in West[57]:

“All
my Urdu-speaking friends refer to Persian as ‘Farsi’, which is its Urdu
name; they tend to transfer that name into English quite naturally. I picked up
the habit directly from them”.

Now
the habit is becoming institutionalised at the highest levels. The Guidelines
for UK Government websites[58]
as well the British Embassy in Tehran[59]
currently describe Persian as ‘Farsi’.

The
BBC, with its long-established ‘BBC Persian’ radio service, is launching a
range of TV channels for the Middle East in 2008. This includes a Persian
language service which is to be called ‘Farsi TV’. Interestingly, the Arabic
counterpart is named as Arabic TV – rather than ‘al-Arabiat TV’. Many
Iranians still remember the partisan posture taken by the BBC in both 1953
(supporting the coup against Dr Mossadegh’s democratically elected government[60])
and also in 1979[61] (as what became widely known as the
‘Ayatollah BBC’[62]).
With these events in mind, it is difficult to interpret the BBC’s choice as
anything other than a conscious decision.

Across
the Atlantic, despite the US Library of Congress Standards recommending the use
of the word ‘Persian’[63],
‘Farsi’ is used in the United States for Security Initiative Programmes of
language teaching[64],[65],[66]
as well as in other official documents and websites[67],[68].

American
usage of ‘Farsi’ instead of Persian has not only has created confusion, but
even suggests division amongst Persian-speaking peoples. For instance, according
to the CIA’s ‘World Fact Book’, the language of Iran, Afghanistan and the
UAE states as Persian, while Bahrainis’ speak ‘Farsi’[69].

Islamic
Fundamentalists and Pan-Arabists in Iran

On
the other side of the ideological divide, things are not very different. In
post-revolutionary Iran, news agencies[70],
English language journals[71],
textbooks issued by the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance, and resources
for foreign tourists often refer to Persian as ‘Farsi’.

Since
the coming of theocratic regime
to power in Iran, the regime leaders have dedicated significant resources to
restructuring Iranian culture and values. Iranians are now vigorously-encouraged
to choose Arabic/Islamic names for their children[72],
and a large number of Iranian names have been outlawed[73].
Many pre-Islamic historical and archaeological sites have been devastated under
the cover of development projects: destroyed as part of highway[74]
and railway track construction[75];
contaminated irreparably by chemical factories[76];
undermined by nearby hotels[77];
obliterated as part of mining[78];
or submerged beneath dam reservoirs[79].
There have even been threats to bulldoze Persepolis[80].
In general, pre-Islamic Iranian heritage has been downplayed
and undermined
in favour of the promotion of Islamic culture[81],
the Islamic way of life, and above all the Arabic language. There have even been
systematic attempts to change to ‘Farsi’ the name used in the international
community for the Persian language – as a political statement[82].

Ruhollah
Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic regime, publicly made no secret of his
contempt for pre-Islamic Iranian culture – deriding everything Iranian from
Noruz to the Persian language. According to Roya Hakakian[83]:

“.
. [Khomeini] made no secret of his contempt for the non-Muslim dimensions of
Iranian life. He injected Persian with so many Arabic words that it confounded
the ordinary listener, something for which he compensated by repetitiveness.”

This
attitude was mirrored in the views of many other prominent members of the
Islamic regime. Although the Friday Sermons organised by the Islamic Republic
say little about the Persian language – indicating its perceived relative lack
of importance – a detailed and explicit statement was made in 1981 by Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani in his role as the Islamic Republic’s Chairman of the
Expediency Discernment Council. On that occasion, he linked the fate of the
Persian language directly to that of Persian nationality: in his view of the
future, both shall vanish[84]:

“.
. we believe that the future [is] Arabic, not Persian . . on
the day the united Islamic government is established, certainly its language
cannot be anything but Arabic”.

Some
senior regime members are less negative �� at least in their words, if not in
their actions. Ali Khamenei, then
the state President and the current
Spiritual Leader of the Islamic Republic, emphasised the importance of the
Persian language in 1988 in a speech entitled “The
Greatness of the Persian Language and the Necessity of Protecting it”[85].
He spoke about:

“[the]
revolutionary duty to promote the national language, and [how] that national
language constitutes the most important and original determinant of cultural
identity for any nation”.

He
then asserted the past and present international importance of the Persian
language in the Islamic world, and especially in India and Central Asia,
concluding that:

“[Today,]
Persian is the language of true . . and revolutionary Islam”.

More
recently, various Islamic commentators have been somewhat less committed to the
Persian language. For example, in 2003, Naser Pourpirar[86] demanded that the national language of Iran
should be replaced with Arabic[87]:

“It
is very unfortunate that we cannot put the Persian language aside and replace it
with the language of Qur’an. However the future of Iran is at the hand of
Islamic Unity. Spreading the Arabic language among Iranian youths and
incorporating it more seriously into the education system . . can make a
foundation for such Islamic Unity.”

Pourpirar
has a startling range of views – including that the Parthian and the Sasanid
dynasties are baseless fabrications by Jewish-Orientalists and that the
indigenous peoples of Iran were wiped out by the ‘savage Slavic Achaemenids’
so that Iran was then free of human settlement until the Muslim Arabs arrived.
He is however recognised
as a scholar by the Islamic regime, who quote extensively from his written work.

Ghahreman
Safavi is another of the Islamic Regime’s new breed of scholars.He is based in the UK and presented a paper on ‘Iranian identity’ in
2004 at SOAS. He consistently used the word ‘Farsi’ – although
unfortunately always inaccurately[88]:

“Old
Farsi is a branch of [the] Avestan language . . [and the] Avesta has been
written in Iranian language (Ancient Farsi) . . [while] New Farsi, which is Dari
Farsi . .”.

The
Iranian diaspora

Perhaps
most worrying, however, is the use of the word ‘Farsi’ by some Iranians,
especially in the diaspora. It is difficult to understand why they might,
however inadvertently, allow themselves to contribute in this way to the
denigration of Iranian cultural achievements.

“.
. the Iranians living in the USA, when they answer questions about languages
that they know in their application forms for jobs or university courses. I
suspect that they even feel gratified to think that ‘the known word of
Farsi’ can now be used in the English language. If only they knew that by
using the word ‘Farsi’ . . they find themselves damaging irreparably the
fame and cultural status of Iran.”

A
number of Iranian academics now use the word ‘Farsi’ to refer to Persian in
their English publications[90].
For example, Dr Mohammed Chaichian, Professor of Sociology at Mount Mercy
College, discusses the question of cultural identity in first generation
Iranians – always using ‘Farsi’, and thereby himself diminishing that
identity[91].

Professor
Franklin Lewis reflects on the snowball effect that this has when the media get
involved[92]:

“The
media has accelerated and canonized [this] process with the spread of the
Iranian diaspora around the English-speaking world, especially, perhaps in North
America”.

For
those Iranians in French-speaking countries, the use of the word ‘Farsi’ for
the Persian language is incidentally doubly incongruous since it sounds
indistinguishable from the word ‘farci’, or ‘stuffed’[93].

Some
diaspora Iranians have, however, at last woken up to the problem and are now
proposing action. A contributor to Persian Gulf Online comments that[94]:

“The
significant point which unfortunately seems very difficult to get through to the
Iranian Diaspora, specially those residing in the United States – by far the
biggest and potentially most influential group of Iranian émigré community –
is that by keeping the term 'Persian', we help preserve a 'CONTINUITY' which is
an important cultural necessity.”

He
suggests that:

“We
cannot preserve the best in our culture unless we are prepared to take care of
it. I believe we Iranians have succeeded in confusing everyone about our
identity and culture, ourselves included. We have diluted our identity by
overeducating foreigners. We are so eager to defend the Iranian image outside of
Iran that we have created confusion about the name of our country, the name of
our people, the name of our seas and the name of our language.”

IN
Conclusion

Dr
John Perry, Professor of Persian Language at the University of Chicago, emphasises
the importance of language for a nation[95]:

“Of
all man's cultural badges, that of language is perhaps the most intimately felt
and tenaciously defended”.

Sadly,
it seems that sizeable numbers of Iranians are not yet defending their cultural
heritage stalwartly enough.

Of
course, it may still not be too late – even though warnings were being issued
over twenty years ago. Professor
Geoffrey Lewis, from Oxford University, was outraged in 1984 by the
inappropriate use of the word ‘Farsi’[96]:

“It
may still not be too late to put an end to the grotesque affectation of applying
the name ‘Farsi’ to the language which for more than five hundred years has
been known to English-speakers as Persian.”

Yarshater
adds his full intellectual weight:

“We
should, in order to protect our literature and ancient cultural credibility in
the West, strictly avoid using the word ‘Farsi’ and instead use the same old
and well-known word of ‘Persian’. We should realise that the usage of the
word ‘Farsi’ instead of ‘Persian’ acts against our national
interests”.

In
conclusion, using the word ‘Farsi’ for Persian in any Western language, and
in particular English, is a linguistic nonsense. Additionally, it undermines all
the positive cultural connotations of the word ‘Persian’ for modern Iran and
adds to the recent media portrayal of Iran as a strange and distant society[97].

To
use the word ‘Farsi’ instead of ‘Persian’ is an insult to the Iranian
peoples and their culture and “one might even venture to say uneducated”[98].
It is “one of the greatest affronts to great cultures in our time” [99].

Bibliography
given in the text (footnotes)

[1]C.
E. Wilson, “The
Formation of Modern Persian, the Beginnings and Progress of the Literature,
and the So-Called Renaissance”, Bulletin
of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London,
Vol. 2, No. 2. (1922), p.217.

[4]
“It was in the east, remote from the centers of Arabic culture and with
large segments of the population (notably, the dehqāns, the
Persian-speaking native aristocracy [. . ]) having no particular attachment
to that culture, facilitated the rise of new Persian and its spread as the
lingua franca of the region as well as encouraging literary composition in
that language”, quoted from: J. S. Meisami, “The Past in Service of the
Present: Two Views of History in Medieval Persia”, Poetics Today,
Vol. 14, No. 2, Cultural Processes in Muslim and Arab Societies: Medieval
and Early Modern Periods. (Summer, 1993), p.249.

[5]W.
B. Henning, “Sogdian Loan-Words in New Persian”, Bulletin of the
School of Oriental Studies, University of London, Vol. 10, No. 1.
(1939), pp. 93-106.

[6]
T. Cuyler Young Jr., “Persians”, The Oxford Encyclopaedia of
Archaeology in the Near East, vol. 4., American Schools of Oriental
Research, Oxford University Press (1997) p. 295.

[8]
J. M. Cook, “The Rise of the Achaemenids and Establishment of their
Empire”, in The Median and Achaemenid Periods, The Cambridge History of
Iran, vol. 2, Cambridge University Press, (1993), p. 238.

[9]
See idem., “Persians”, The Oxford Encyclopaedia of Archaeology
in the Near East, vol. 4., American Schools of Oriental Research, Oxford
University Press (1997) p. 295.

[10]
See idem., “The Rise of the Achaemenids and Establishment of their
Empire”, in The Median and Achaemenid Periods, The Cambridge History of
Iran, vol. 2, Cambridge University Press, (1993), p. 238.

[11]
Named after an Iranian tribe settled in southwest Iran around 1500 B.C.E. In
the Achaemenid inscriptions it was called Parsa, in Elamite Parsin,
in modern Persian Fārs, and in Arabic Fars, or Fâris)
— it became the general name of the whole country under the Achaemenid
dynasty (550-330 B.C.E.).

[15]
“The modern southern Iranian languages include southwestern Persian
(spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan); northwestern Baluchi (in
eastern Iran, western Afghanistan, and south-western Pakistan, as well as
UAE and Oman), and Kurdish (in north-western Iran, northern Iraq, and
eastern Turkey); and numerous remnants of Median and Parthian dialects in
central and northwestern Iran, and also northern Iran, and eastern Turkey”
(Gernot L. Windfuhr, “Persian”, The Oxford Encyclopaedia of
Archaeology in the Near East, vol. 4., American Schools of Oriental
Research, Oxford University Press ,1997; p. 293.).

[18]The Persian spoken in Tajikistan and
Afghanistan have
been “strongly influenced by classical Arabic and – to a lesser extent
– old Mongolian and various Turkic dialects, all of which are non-Iranian
languages”, but still fully comprehensible by other Persian speakers; (Homa
Katouzian, “Problems
of Political Development in Iran: Democracy, Dictatorship or Arbitrary
Government?”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 22,
No. 1/2. (1995), p.16)

[20]
Of course “Persian-speaking
people of the Khorasan, Kerman, Fars, Isfahan, Tehran and the Caspian
provinces have different accents or speak a dialect which is not understood
by the others, but they have (and often take pride in) their own specific
provincial identities, ranging from poetical genres and styles to local
cuisines. Furthermore, the typical Isfahani's character is clearly distinct
from the typical Shirazi's, despite the fact that both of these cities
belong to the heartland of ancient Persia.”, quote from Homa
Katouzian, “Problems
of Political Development in Iran: Democracy, Dictatorship or Arbitrary
Government?”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 22,
No. 1/2. (1995),p.15.

[61]
William Engdahl,“What really
happened to the Shah of Iran”, A Century of War: Anglo-America Oil
Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press (2004), p.172 (Engdahl
writes: “The British Broadcasting Corporation's Persian-language
broadcasts, with dozens of Persian-speaking BBC 'correspondents' sent into
even the smallest village, drummed up hysteria against the Shah. The BBC
gave Ayatollah Khomeini a full propaganda platform inside Iran during this
time.”)

[73]
According to Austin Dacey, this policy had in fact a reverse effect on
Iranians since a “. . lot of young Iranians are changing their Islamic
names, like Mohammad, to Persian names. That can give you a very clear
indication that they are turning their backs to Islam, rejecting a privilege
of having the name of the prophet.” (See: Reading
Madison in Tehran - The Next Secular Revolution, http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=Dacey_25_4;
accessed June 25, 2007)

[80]
As just one example, Persepolis was threatened with bulldozing by Sadeq
Khalhali, one of the most notorious clerics in Iran. However, the
inhabitants of the nearby city of Shiraz set up barricades and risked their
lives by laying down in front of the bulldozers – so saving the ancient
site from destruction. Khalkali had intended to continue on to attack the
mausoleum of Ferdowsi, as the greatest Persian writer of the greatest
Persian epic, but was dissuaded by the strongly negative public reaction at
Persepolis.

[86]
Naser Pourpirar is a former member
of Communist Tudeh Party, who was expelled for theft from party’s fund,
according to Nur ul-Din Kianuri (see: “Khāterāt-e
Nūr ul-Dīn Kiānūri”, Etela'at Daily, Tehran SH/1372 – in
Persian).
According to Alirexza Nourizadeh, an Iranian journalist based in UK,
Pourpirar was an interrogator with the Islamic Revolutionary Courts. who
later proclaimed himself as a scholar. He believes a significant
portion of Iranian history, including the Parthian and the Sasanian
dynasties are baseless-fabrications by Jewish-Orientalists and Zionists. He
also claims that Abu-Moslem-e Khorrasani, Babak-e
Khorramdin, Mani, Mazdak and Zoroaster historical figures were invented by
modern Jewish historians, and the Achaemenids were “savage Slavic
people” which with the help of Jews of Susa massacred the indigenous
people of ancient Iran who incidentally were Arabs, to the point that Iran
was completely wiped
out of human settlement until the beginning of Islam (See; Naser
Pourpirar, “Haq va Sabr”, Official Weblog of Pourpirar, http://www.naria.blogfa.com;
(in Persian) retrieved June 14, 2007)